Forget that at least one of the Gospels, along with some of the most popular Christmas songs, were written by Jews. Aslan, who converted back to Islam, the faith of his childhood, after converting to Christianity, calmly explained over and over why he — a historian and Ph.D. in the history of religion — had written a book about “the founder of Christianity,” a phrase Green kept using.

“Anyone who thinks this book is an attack on Christianity hasn’t read it,” Aslan said.

In fact, Jesus’s advocacy for the “poor and the dispossessed,” as Aslan documents throughout Zealot, is, in my view, yet another driver of the conservative Christian pushback against Zealot, in addition to the well-known Islamophobia message machine of the right.

The life and teachings of Jesus, understood in their historical context, are about feeding the poor, housing the homeless, caring for the sick and loving the neighbor as yourself.